Warsaw is notable among Europe’s capital cities not for its size, its age, or its beauty but for its indestructibility. It is a phoenix that has risen repeatedly from the ashes of war. Having suffered fearful damage during the Swedish and Prussian occupation of 1655–56, it was again assaulted in 1794, when the Russian army massacred the population of the right-bank suburb of Praga. In 1944, after the Warsaw Uprising failed, by Adolf Hitler’s order the city was razed; the left-bank suburbs, controlled by the Germans, were emptied of their remaining population; and the buildings were systematically reduced to rubble by fire and dynamite. In 1945, however, the people of Warsaw, the Varsovians, returned, and the city resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country’s centre of social, political, economic, scientific, and cultural life. Many of the historical streets, buildings, and churches have been restored exactly according to their original forms.

Since the second half of the 18th century, the emblem of Warsaw (originally a siren) has been a mermaid with sword and shield in hand, representing the creature who in legend led a prince to the site of Warsaw and ordered him to found the city. The city’s motto is, appropriately, “Contemnit procellas” (“It defies the storms”). Pop. (2011) 1,700,612.

Landscape

City site

Warsaw lies on the Vistula (Wisła) River, about 240 miles (386 km) southeast of the Baltic coast city of Gdańsk. It is situated in the middle of the Warsaw Plain, a glacier-formed basin that ranges from 250 to 380 feet (76 to 116 metres) above sea level. Divided into right- and left-bank portions by the river, the city extends about 18 miles from north to south and 16 miles from east to west. The river is some 3,900 feet (1,190 metres) wide at this point, although the riverbed has been artificially narrowed by embankment to a third of this width.

The Vistula River at Warsaw.D.C. Williamson, London

Climate

The climate is moderate and rather cool, the prevailing westerly winds bringing frequent changes of weather. The average yearly temperature is in the mid-40s F (about 8 °C), with a July average in the mid-60s F (about 19 °C) and a January average in the mid-20s F (about −3 °C). Yearly rainfall averages 21 inches (541 mm), most of which falls in the summer. Snow cover persists for 50 to 64 days a year.

City layout

The size of Warsaw reflects the historical fortunes of the city. From about 0.5 square mile (1.25 square km) in the 17th century, it expanded to 50 square miles (130 square km) by 1937 and, in the postwar period, to 172 square miles (445 square km) by 1957. Growth has continued since. The subdivision into seven districts—Śródmieście (the city’s centre), Żoliborz, Wola, Ochota, Mokotów, Praga-Południe (Praga South), and Praga-Północ (Praga North)—reflects centuries-old local names, but Warsaw is now virtually a new creation, with a layout that only partly resembles the historical city. The changes reflect a conscious planning of social and economic functions. Industries and warehouses are located on the outskirts or between modern housing developments; park areas have tripled in size; and streets, though still largely based on the old network, have been widened. The Old and New towns, Nowy Świat Avenue, and the city churches and palaces, on the other hand, have all been carefully reconstructed.

Warsaw possesses a wide variety of architectural monuments, whether as replicas or originals. In the Old Town, which was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 1980, the Gothic St. John’s Cathedral and the red-brick fortifications known as the Barbican remain from the medieval period. The houses of the Old Town Market Square have been rebuilt in the splendour of their 15th-century style. There are many Baroque churches of the Counter-Reformation period, including the Jesuit Church next to the cathedral and the Church of the Holy Cross, which contains the heart of the Polish French composer Frédéric Chopin. The magnificently reconstructed Royal Castle, decorated in late 18th-century style, is on Zamkowy Square. Other royal and aristocratic palaces are at Łazienkowski Park and at John III Sobieski’s Wilanów. South of Łazienkowski Park is Belweder (Belvedere) Palace, a former presidential residence used now for ceremonial occasions. Remnants of the tsarist era are evident in the Church of St. Alexander in the middle of Trzech Krzyży Square and in the vast Alexander Citadel on the riverside, north of the New Town. The grandest of tsarist monuments, the colossal Orthodox Cathedral (1911), was demolished by the Polish government in the 1920s, but its symbolic role in the city has been assumed by the massive Palace of Culture and Science (1949), built by the Soviets south of the Old Town. The city’s modern architecture is generally regarded as undistinguished. Although the prewar garden suburbs of Żoliborz and Saska Kępa have survived, the vast sprawl of contemporary suburbia is made up in large part of seemingly endless expanses of uniform, prefabricated concrete apartment blocks.

Numerous historical monuments adorn Warsaw, some of which have been the object of political conflict. The postwar government was sensitive toward monuments and tended to discourage unapproved representations of people and events. For instance, the national shrine of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which contains the body of a Polish youth killed in the battle for Lwów in 1919, bears only inscriptions starting with the Spanish Civil War in 1937. There is an imposing monument unveiled in 1948 in the Muranȯw area honouring the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943), but not until 1989, the year in which Solidarity formed the country’s first noncommunist national government since World War II, was there a memorial honouring the Home Army, which fought the Germans in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky (Polish: Dzierżyński), founder of the Soviet security police, which stood on Saxon Square on the spot where Tsar Nicholas I had raised a statue to his loyalist Polish generals, was removed in 1990. Other monuments affected by politics include the Nicolaus Copernicus statue on Ulica (street) Krakowskie Przedmieṡcie, which was the object of struggles with the Nazi occupiers, and the statue of Chopin, in Łazienkowski Park, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940 but has been reconstructed.

Warsaw UprisingWarsaw Uprising monument, Warsaw.Dhirad

People

The multinational population of Warsaw was transformed as a result of World War II, and today the city is composed almost entirely of Poles. For centuries, though, Warsaw was a place where the Polish-speaking Roman Catholic majority lived alongside Jews, Germans, and Russians. Early in the 20th century the largely Yiddish-speaking Jewish community accounted for almost 50 percent of the population, although it declined somewhat after 1918. The old German community, originally connected with trade and commerce, was being assimilated, however, and the Russian community, influential in the 19th century, had dwindled. From 1939 to 1945, what remained of the former diversity was destroyed. Warsaw’s Jews were virtually annihilated by the Nazis, and their few remaining numbers have continued to decrease. The intelligentsia also was decimated, the administrative class connected with the prewar republic dispersed, and the working class diminished by deaths and deportations. After the war Warsaw had to be completely repopulated by returning refugees, by a vast influx of peasants from the countryside, and by the families of officials connected with the new communist state. The overwhelming majority of the people are Roman Catholic.

Economy

Manufacturing and services

After 1948, when Poland’s communist government was established, the largest segment of the city’s labour force was employed by state-owned and cooperatively owned sectors of the national economy; manufacturing accounted for about one-third of the workers in the 1980s. Shortages of some consumer goods and food items were a problem, symbolized by the rather common sight of people standing in lines to buy goods. Electrical engineering; metallurgy (including the Warsaw steelworks); machine production (including automobile manufacturing); and toolmaking, chemical, printing, textile and clothing, and food enterprises long dominated the economy. Since the 1990s, however, following the collapse of communism, the economic structure of the city has changed rapidly. In particular, the role of services, notably banking and insurance, has grown. There are increasing numbers of new private-sector firms and foreign companies in the city as well. The Warsaw Stock Exchange was reopened in 1991.

Transportation

Warsaw is the hub of main rail, road, and air routes that are of importance to eastern Europe. Expressways have been built through the city along both banks of the Vistula River and in the form of a ring road through the inner suburbs. Motor traffic still shares the capital’s main streets with a surface tramway system. The city also began constructing an underground railway system in the 1990s. The Warsaw Frédéric Chopin Airport, with international and domestic service, is in Okęcie, south of the city centre.

Administration and society

Government

As the capital of the Republic of Poland, Warsaw houses all the central institutions of the national government as well as the residence of the Polish president (the Presidential Palace). The Sejm, Poland’s national legislature, is not far from the crossroads of Nowy Świat and Aleje Jerozolimskie. The government of Warsaw is run by the elected City Council, headed by a city president. Warsaw’s seven subdivisions also have their own elected legislatures. Until 1990 the city administration was only nominally elective and subject to the Warsaw Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the country’s communist party. The city is also the administrative centre of the Mazowieckie województwo.

Municipal services and health

Like most large cities, Warsaw is continually expanding its infrastructure to keep pace with its growth. A postwar housing shortage was alleviated with prefabricated housing units, and housing construction in the suburbs and future planning have continued. As in many European countries, medical and health services are virtually free for all citizens. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and medical research facilities are widespread.

Education

Education in Warsaw benefits from the presence of the headquarters of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which coordinates research in both physical and social sciences through a number of institutes and industrial establishments. The Technical University of Warsaw and the University of Warsaw are notable institutions. Major libraries include the library (established in 1817) of the University of Warsaw and the National Library (1919); there are also a number of specialist libraries.

Cultural life

Warsaw’s writers, artists, and musicians play a major role in creating the cultural values of the nation. The city is also the seat of such prominent institutions as the National Museum and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. There are numerous specialist museums (including POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) and many social, cultural, and educational associations. Poland’s leading theatre and radio and television operations are centred in Warsaw. The National Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Opera draw large crowds. The Warsaw Autumn is a festival of contemporary orchestral and choral music.

Extensive recreational facilities exist in and around the city. Several large and many smaller parks provide open space to accommodate a variety of outdoor activities. Indoor and outdoor swimming pools, sport and physical culture centres, and ice rinks are prevalent. Major sporting and other events take place in a number of stadiums.

History

Foundation and early development

The origins of Warsaw remain obscure. Excavations within present urban limits have confirmed the existence of Stare Bródno, a small trading settlement of the 10th and early 11th centuries ce. Its functions were taken over successively by Kamion (c. 1065) and Jazdow (first recorded in 1262). About the end of the 13th century, Jazdow was moved about two miles to the north, to a village named Warszowa (Warsaw), and the community was strengthened by the protection of a castle. From 1339, authority was invested in a bailiff and, from 1376, in a city council. By the end of the 14th century, the growing settlement had a double line of protective ramparts.

In the 15th century the town became the capital of the duchy of Mazovia, and the New Town sprang up to the north of the original, constricted site, afterward known as the Old Town. In 1526 both city and province became incorporated into the kingdom of Poland; from 1569 the Sejm met in Warsaw, and from 1573 the elections of the kings took place there. The first permanent bridge was built across the Vistula River in 1573, and in 1596 King Sigismund III Vasa began to remodel the castle as a royal residence. In 1611 the king and his court finally moved from Kraków (Cracow) to Warsaw, making it the capital of the Polish state. Powerful persons built residences in Warsaw, and autonomous settlements sprang up around its periphery. This growth proved short-lived, for a Swedish invasion (1655–56) devastated the flourishing city. Afterward the War of the Polish Succession (1733–38) brought economic decay and pestilence.

Sigismund III, detail of a painting, school of Rubens; in the Bavarian State Picture Galleries, Munich, Germany.Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich

Growth of the modern city

The 18th century

The development of manufacturing, banks, and other enterprises during the early 18th century provided a firm economic base for a number of early exercises in urban planning. During the reign (1764–95) of King Stanisław II August Poniatowski, Warsaw became the centre of the Polish Enlightenment. The first lay school (Szkoła Rycerska) was opened in 1765, and in 1773 the Committee on National Education began its activity in the city. The Polish theatre and numerous printing establishments also flourished. Warsaw played an important role in the striving for Polish political rebirth (following the first partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1772) when a parliamentary constitution was proclaimed in the city on May 3, 1791. The national insurrection of 1794, led by Tadeusz Kościuszko against the Russo-Prussian second partition, was brutally crushed; the ensuing third partition of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria left Warsaw a provincial town of South Prussia. (SeePartitions of Poland.)

The 19th and early 20th centuries

The occupation of Warsaw by the French Army in 1806 was followed a year later by Napoleon I’s creation of the duchy of Warsaw, a measure that reinstated the city as a capital. The French emperor’s downfall, however, led to occupation by Russia.

Under the Congress Kingdom of Poland (1815–30), formed by the Congress of Vienna and ruled by the Russian tsar, real national independence remained an elusive goal, and Warsaw figured prominently in struggles to throw off foreign domination. The November Insurrection that sparked the Russo-Polish War of 1831, in which the Poles held the initial advantage, ended with the storming of Warsaw’s defenses and the initiation of 30 years of military rule. Economic growth, however, continued, and by the mid-19th century textile, metal, and tannery industries were well established and the city had become the centre of a continentwide rail network. A fresh cycle of insurrection, which broke out in January 1863, led to the brief existence of an underground National Government in Warsaw. The suppression of the revolt led in 1864 to the abolition of the Congress Kingdom. Warsaw became a provincial city of the Russian Empire’s “Vistula Land.” A period of Russification was launched, and Varsovians abandoned national politics for a period of “positivism,” which aimed to preserve Polish culture at all costs. Population soared, reaching 756,000 by 1903, and urban services underwent extensive modification. Despite revolutionary activity between 1905 and 1907, censorship was alleviated, Polish schools and other cultural institutions were established, and Warsaw experienced a cultural renaissance. After World War I the city regained its status as the national capital.

The population of Warsaw passed the 1,000,000 mark in 1925. The period between the world wars was marked by further advances despite a period of inflation, depressions and slumps in trade, and political instability. Automobile and aircraft manufacture were introduced; city services underwent further expansion; and Warsaw’s emergence as a European cultural centre was symbolized by the beginning of such international competitions as the International Chopin Competition for Pianists (1927) and the Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition (1935).

During the Nazisiege of Warsaw in 1939, more than 10,000 citizens perished and more than 50,000 were wounded before the lack of supplies forced a surrender. The subsequent Nazi occupation was aimed at reducing Warsaw to a provincial city; its cultural treasures were systematically plundered and its inhabitants carried away to German labour camps or to concentration camps.

Warsaw’s Jewish community was devastated. At the turn of the 20th century the city had contained the largest urban concentration of Jews in the world. Warsaw’s Jews were heavily represented in the city’s bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, especially in the commercial classes and the professions. In addition to full religious and political freedom, Warsaw’s Jewry enjoyed its own press, its own Yiddish theatre, and its own Jewish schools. Conflict with the rest of Warsaw society existed, but it was not alarming until immediately before the war.

Following German entry into Warsaw, a Jewish ghetto was established, surrounded by a high wall. Disease, starvation, and overcrowding caused thousands to perish before deportations to the Nazi death camps, especially to Treblinka, began in late 1941. Some 312,000 Jews were sent to the gas chambers in 1942 alone. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 signaled a last, heroic act of defiance in the face of impending annihilation. The demolition by the Nazis of the Great Synagogue (now restored) symbolized the end of six centuries of Jewish Warsaw.

Near the war’s end Warsaw became the national resistance centre. With the Soviet forces nearing the city, the Warsaw Home Army rose up against the weakened German garrison and was near victory when German reinforcements arrived and wiped out the Polish resistance. From 150,000 to 180,000 of the city’s people died in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In all, some 600,000 to 800,000 Varsovians are estimated to have died between 1939 and 1944, and the Soviet armies in 1945 found the city in a state of almost total devastation. On Feb. 1, 1945, the Polish government made Warsaw its capital, and an office for urban reconstruction was set up. In the decades that followed the city was rebuilt; the scars of war almost entirely healed over, and the city expanded beyond its prewar size in both area and population.

With the demise of the communist government in Poland in 1989, Warsaw underwent a rapid transition from command to market economy. Closed since World War II, the Warsaw Stock Exchange reopened and became an important market in central Europe. An economic and construction boom, which dramatically reduced unemployment and transformed the city’s skyline with new office towers and hotels, continued into the early 21st century.

The standard of living in Warsaw lagged behind that of other European capitals, but low wages had the advantage of drawing investment to the city. In the early 2000s, Warsaw’s conservative mayor (later Polish president) Lech Kaczynski helped create an atmosphere of social intolerance by banning gay pride parades and speaking disparagingly about Warsaw’s ethnic German minority. His successor, Warsaw’s first female mayor, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (elected 2006), took a very different tack, acting as an advocate for social diversity, gay rights, and environmental responsibility.